Page 4 of Off the Grid

I stare at him, frozen in place and blinking rapidly as if that will make his words digest any faster. “Dad. I . . .”

“I know. I know.” He raises his hands up, the tremor barely noticeable, and his smile bursting with pride. My chest constricts from competing emotions. “It’s a huge thing and I’m springing this on you out of the blue. I know you’re not good with surprises, and I should have led into it more . . . but is it such a bad thing that I want you here? With me? With us? Being a part of what you used to love? To carry on the legacy?”

I’ve learned to block emotions, and right now it’s coming in handy. Otherwise, the emotion thick in his voice would have had me already agreeing.

“Dad.” His name is a sigh. A question. A holy shit. “I don’t understand. What about Uncle Luca? Isn’t he—wasn’t he supposed to be the one?” I’m at a loss for words, and I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. My uncle Luca is second-in-command here. Always has been. It’s understandable to think he’d be the natural successor when my dad stepped down.

Or when his illness prevented him from performing his daily duties adequately.

“Yes. That is the presumption everyone has. But Luca and I have discussed this at length. In fact, he wanted to be here to be a part of this discussion so you’d know you have his blessing, but he has meetings he couldn’t cancel. He’s a shrewd businessman who understands the why to this change in direction. He’ll remain the steadying hand behind the scenes while you’re the charismatic one to the public. You’d be a team, but it would be one hundred percent you, kiddo, if that’s what you wanted.”

I fight the urge to shove up out of my chair and move. To abate the sudden restlessness in me that his request has just caused. “This is a lot. Like . . . wow.”

He gives a measured nod. “It is. I know. But then again, this”—he points to his own body, which will eventually ravish itself until it can’t survive anymore—“was never supposed to happen like this.”

“Dad,” I repeat. The lone syllable is a mix of emotions. Resignation. Sadness. Despair. It’s easier for me to pretend it’s not real. That his diagnosis will end differently or that a medical breakthrough will prevent the unmitigable result of this disease.

“I know.” His smile is soft. Bittersweet. More sad than anything because, as he’s explained to me before, he doesn’t want me to have to watch him decline—which will inevitably happen. “But it is what it is. We have time—hopefully lots of it, right?”

I nod, hearing the hope in his voice and wanting to cling to it. “Yes. We have all the time in the world because you’re a stubborn man.” I shoot for a pie in the sky comment that we both know is a lie but that we cling to anyway. “So it’s a moot point that you’re asking me to step in.”

“Let’s just say I’m doing the whole preparing for the worst, hoping for the best scenario, Cami.” He rises from his seat and makes his way slowly to the windows and his company beyond.

I used to ride on those broad shoulders. I used to grab on to his hair with my little hands and sing silly songs with him while he walked through these halls shadowing his own father.

The memories come out of nowhere. So many. So unique. So damn pure. I hold tight to them as he gathers his thoughts.

“We’ve taken only five podiums in two years, Camilla. We haven’t won a race in four.” Both of those things weigh heavily on him as they should any team owner. But my dad isn’t any team owner. He’s the one running an iconic brand that has been known and respected worldwide since its insanely successful inception. “We’re underperforming. The chances we do have get blown for one reason or another. We’ve become the team people see but don’t notice. The team that’s beginning to be forgotten about or even worse, looked at with pity. We’re just there.”

“It’s been a bad couple of years. Every team has those. But I don’t understand what the team’s success has to do with me. You know this business inside and out. Wouldn’t that make you and Uncle Luca the right men for the job to turn things around?”

Not to mention the fact that I’m grossly unqualified to run this behemoth. Do I know a lot about the business due to years of exposure? Sure. Hell, it’s the only thing we talk about at most family functions. It’s what we take family trips around.

Do I have an invested interest in the company to succeed? Absolutely.

But neither of those things give me the skill set required to be able to run this place. They can help, sure, but they definitely aren’t what is needed to step in and lead.

The last thing I want to do is to step into a role and fail the legacy left to me.

“Dad, being a Moretti by name doesn’t mean I know what to do or that it’ll guarantee I’ll be good at it.”

He gives a slow nod and then turns to face me, his hands now in his pants pockets. I’m not certain if that’s to control his shaking for my sake. He’s gotten rather good at hiding it as best he can. “You’re right. You could look at it that way. That Luca would be the natural choice or that there is a high probability of failure with nepotism. Or you could say that clearly what we’ve been doing—what Luca and I have been doing at the helm—isn’t working. Some might even say that we’re dinosaurs who are stuck in our ways.”

“Then they’d be wrong.”

He holds a finger up to make a point. “Or, you could look at it and think that we need a fresh pair of eyes. A new perspective. Someone who can come in here and not only learn the ropes but who can build a team while putting her master’s degree in marketing to good use.”

“I’m twenty-five. Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds? Putting someone my age in control of all of this?” I hold my hands out to motion to everything beyond the glass.

“That’s why we’d start the process now. I’m not naïve in thinking you could just step in on day one and be ready to go. It’ll take a few years for you to grow into this position. To learn the ins and outs. I want to be able to teach you while I’m still able to.”

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about that,” I warn, because if we don’t acknowledge his illness, then it can’t be happening, right?

“I must look toward the future, kiddo, and doing that means I know this place will be taken care of. Protected. Have a future.”

My tongue feels thick in my mouth as I struggle with what to say to that.

There’s absolutely nothing I can say, so I focus back on me. On dispelling this idea of his that equally terrifies and intrigues me, even though I’d never admit to either because both are polarizing.